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Most Asian countries are regarded as Confucian countries although each has its own historical and cultural background. Little is known about how people in different Asian countries perceive their family boundaries. This study is an attempt to compare the perception of the family in China, Japan, and Korea. We examined the family perception and found substantial differences among the three. Chinese people showed the widest and paternally extended perception of family. Data from people in Korea nearly matched data from China, but family perception developed bilaterally. People in Japan, however, perceived only blood‐tied, intimate relations as family members. In addition, the perception of the family was not substantially different between the genders in Japan and China, but in South Korea, men perceived family boundaries more widely than women, implying that women have a greater family burden than men in Korea. Considering the heterogeneity in family perceptions in these countries, this paper tries to explain how social institutions interact with individuals and impact the perception of family. Finally, this paper concludes that it is inappropriate to tie the three East Asian countries as 'Confucian civilizations' in terms of family perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observation bias and error characteristics are the preconditions for the effective assimilation of observation data. In this paper, the bias and error characteristics of the AHI (Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) and AGRI (Multi-Channel Advanced Geostationary Orbit Radiation Imager (AGRI) data are compared and analyzed, with an emphasis on the observations obtained from land areas. The results show that the observation errors of the two instruments for the ocean area have a good channel consistency over ocean areas, which are all with errors of about 0.6 K; however, the bias and error are significantly affected by the land-surface types and terrain heights over land. For most of the AHI channels, the bias in urban-area bias is smaller than that of those of other surface types, while that of the AGRI data exhibits just the opposite trend, with obviously larger biases in urban areas. However, the observation errors of these two instruments in urban areas are significantly smaller than those of other surface types. The biases of the two instruments do not extensively change much with the terrain height, only slightly decreasing when the height is above 1000 m; however, the observation errors increase obviously with the increase of terrain heights. The difference between the two instruments is that the observation error of the AHI data tends to be stable and stabilizes above 1000 m, while that of the AGRI data is relatively stable below 500 m. The observation errors of the CO2-sensitive channels of the two instruments over the land areas are obviously smaller than those of other near-surface channels, which may indicate that the data obtained in these two CO2 channels have good application prospects for assimilation over land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

East Asian countries are often characterized as productivist welfare states whose social policies are subordinated to economic growth. However, in the past decade, public pressure for welfare expansion (or welfarism) has built up across all East Asian countries - including China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. Therefore, this paper asks: How has pro-welfare civil society influenced welfare expansion in East Asia over the past decade? Addressing this research question will help fill the theoretical gap on the relationship between contemporary pro-welfare civil society activism and welfare state expansion in East Asian countries. I address this theoretical gap by devising the New Power Approach which argues that pro-welfare civil society is the main driver of welfare expansions when the incumbent government is conservative. By implication, the stronger the pro-welfare civil society in generating political impetus for reforms, the greater the extent of welfare expansion in the country with a conservative government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genus Filipendula (Rosoideae, Rosaceae) comprises about 15 species and mainly distributed in Northern Hemisphere. The phylogenetic relationships based on the nrITS marker are not consistent with the traditional taxonomic systems of the genus. Here, we first analysed the complete chloroplast (cp) genomes of seven Filipendula species (including two varieties of F. palmate). Our results indicated that the cp genomes of Filipendula species had few changes in size, ranging from 154,205 bp to 154,633 bp and the average of 36.63% GC content. A total of 126 annotated genes had the identical order and orientation, implying that the cp genome structure of Filipendula species was rather conserved. However, the cp genomes of Filipendula species exhibited structural differences, including gene loss, transposition and inversion when compared to those of other genera of Rosoideae. Moreover, SSRs with the different number were observed in the cp genome of each Filipendula species and sequence divergence mainly occurred in noncoding regions, in which four mutational hotspots were identified. In contrast, only two positive selection genes (matK and rps8) were found. Phylogenetic and molecular-dating analysis indicated that Filipendula species were divergent from other genera of Rosoideae at about 82.88 Ma. Additionally, Filipendula species from East Asia were split at about 9.64 Ma into two major clades. These results provide a basis for further studying the infrageneric classification of Filipendula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The genus Sanicula comprises ca. 45 taxa, widely distributed from East Asia to North America, which is a taxonomically difficult genus with high medicinal value in Apiaceae. The systematic classification of the genus has been controversial for a long time due to varied characters in key morphological traits. China is one of the most important distributed centers, with ca. 18 species and two varieties. At present, chloroplast genomes are generally considered to be conservative and play an important role in evolutionary relationship study. To investigate the plastome evolution and phylogenetic relationships of Chinese Sanicula, we comprehensively analyzed the structural characteristics of 13 Chinese Sanicula chloroplasts and reconstructed their phylogenetic relationships. Results: In present study, four newly complete chloroplast genome of Sanicula taxa by using Illumina sequencing were reported, with the typical quadripartite structure and 155,396–155,757 bp in size. They encoded 126 genes, including 86 protein-coding genes, 32 tRNA genes and 8 rRNA genes. Genome structure, distributions of SDRs and SSRs, gene content, among Sanicula taxa, were similar. The nineteen intergenic spacers regions, including atpH-atpI, ndhC-trnM, petB-petD, petD-rpoA, petN-psbM, psaJ-rpl33, rbcL-accD, rpoB-trnC, rps16-trnQ, trnE-psbD, trnF-ndhJ, trnH-psbA, trnN-ndhF, trnS-psbZ, trnS-trnR, trnT-trnF, trnV-rps12, ycf3-trnS and ycf4-cemA, and one coding region (ycf1 gene) were the most variable. Results of maximum likelihood analysis based on 79 unique coding genes of 13 Chinese Sanicula samples and two Eryngium (Apiaceae-Saniculoideae) species as outgroup taxa revealed that they divided into four subclades belonged to two clades, and one subclade was consistent with previously traditional Sanicula section of its system. The current classification based on morphology at sect. Sanicla and Sect. Tuberculatae in Chinese Sanicula was not supported by analysis of cp genome phylogeny. Conclusions: The chloroplast genome structure of Sanicula was similar to other angiosperms and possessed the typical quadripartite structure with the conserved genome arrangement and gene features. However, their size varied owing to expansion/contraction of IR/SC boundaries. The variation of non-coding regions was larger than coding regions of the chloroplast genome. Phylogenetic analysis within these Chinese Sanicula were determined using the 79 unique coding genes. These results could provide important data for systematic, phylogenomic and evolutionary research in the genus for the future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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